Posted on 02/14/2006 2:18:38 PM PST by nickcarraway
Even feminist icons are vain about their appearance. In 1999, Betty Friedan, who died on February 4, ran into Byron Dobell, a portrait artist and editor who’d known Friedan for more than twenty years. She asked him to paint her portrait. “It would be something she said she could give to her kids, and I said, ‘Betty, you would hate it!’ ” says Dobell. But Friedan insisted. Over two months they met at his apartment for five two-hour sittings. “I couldn’t make her a beautiful woman—she was not beautiful by Hollywood standards—but I made her a strong woman.” Friedan hated it. She insisted that Dobell charge her a refusal fee, which he did, reluctantly. Then came a note from Friedan’s secretary saying he’d be paid if he agreed to hide it forever or destroy it. He didn’t reply. A director of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery spotted the painting on exhibit at the Century Association and asked Dobell to donate the work to its permanent collection. “The irony,” says Dobell, “is that the one thing Friedan was trying to escape from has given her entrée into one of the most important galleries in the world.”
The artist was very kind to her.
Ouch!!!!
You gotta paint the truth!!!!
This cartoon of Betty mocks feminists! Where's the outrage??!
Okay, for balance, how about a portrait next to hers of one of the millions of murdered, innocent unborn children her philosophy helped to kill?
Dobell's "Portrait of An Aging Harpy"
Poor ole Betty,,,she put the UG in UGLY.
I see it as a Window to No-where, there's no soul in there to be found.
I could see that she was very religious and worshiped Bacchus.
Her undeniable inner ugliness is an entirely different story.
Even her *friends* didn't like her.
Looks like a pretty accurate representation to me. Like Karl Malden with a white wig.
I'll say. For half a moment I didn't even reconnize her.
Betty as lib dem femme beauty queen?
Poor Betty. She used to jog around Sag Harbor and everyone would just stand and watch her.
If she ran any slower she would have been running backwards.
A very funny sight it was.
The painting is brilliant. It captures the sadness of a life spent pushing a philosophy that left her empty and bitter.
Betty Friedan, Jan.1998
Betty Friedan, 07/14/05
She's dead, she's dead, she's dead she's dead she's dead... hi ho. hi ho, she's dead she's dead she's dead. Yea!
Excuse me, I've got to go to confession now.
They both died, but the one on the right did no harm.
****“I couldn’t make her a beautiful woman—she was not beautiful by Hollywood standards—*****
She wasnt beautiful by any standards.Well--Maybe by Helen Thomas's standards.
She is definitely one of the Lee sisters.
You know them, Home and Ugh ?
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